I prefer to think of it as the birth of AI making search exquisitely digestible for everyone — and, more importantly, an opportunity for a new era of monetization and a rebirth of sorts for search.
Bottom line, the generative AI era will rebirth the way we interact with search: The “fold,” once again becomes relevant as we are look for incredibly consolidated views. One potential crucial example would be finding specific data assets within an enterprise around customer churn based on demographics.
Truth be told, we are finally resetting the search experience from an endless scroll to a prompt, above-the-fold summary and/or content with minimal hallucinations. However, search providers that have long depended on pay-per-click behavior and a heavy dose of ads in our search feed will have to be prudent to monitor behavior on LLM-driven search results. If this meaningfully changes behavior, it could create substantial challenges for the likes of Google and Microsoft to a lesser extent. The Holy Grail is highly accurate abstracts with the highest fidelity results while still monetizing the service through ads and data.